Blue Cavern

Hi I need expert advice:

I won "second chance offer" for the complete 18 smurfs of the two McDonald's sets.

Price: 28.84 GBP (about US$50) including shipping.

The seller is a "registered private seller" apparently situated in both England and Germany.

I have five days (apparently) before the offer expires.
I know the McD smurfs are relatively easy to obtain, so this isn't do-or-die, though all 18 (mint according to the caption--the picture looks good, though you know how far that goes) at once is convenient.

Any expert feedback is appreciated. THe seller has a 99.3% rating, with 287 sells this year and no bad marks (this year). (He charges 3% extra for paypal, which actually I'd heard was verboten).

Anyway, thanks for any advice.

Hi Tim

It's always nice to get them all in one go like this but you could easily find then cheaper if you want to wait a bit longer. I originally opened all of mine out of the packets and a bit later I wanted to buy extras to keep them sealed. I have won them for about 1 euro each or even cheaper as they are usually not the most desired smurfs as so many people already have them. I wouldn't buy then for this price but that is just my thoughts and getting them all at once would be tempting.

Can others please reply as I might be out of my tree like Peej....I just love that avatar, it cracks me up everytime.

Dyar

Well that works out at under $3US a smurf so cheap in smurf standards anywhere I guess though these are pretty common. Also I always find you find some of them and not all of them and then it gets annoying to find the missing ones. I am only missing the skateboarder now and its sure hard to find by itself.

So I guess I am saying price is ok and good idea to get them all together. The only thing I am wary of with the second chance offers is if there was a shill bidder and the seller was trying to bump me up.

It's nice to get the whole set together, but the price does seem a bit steep for these smurfs as they are always on ebay. I think too that there might be some chill bidding involved, unless he had some double sets and tough the price went high enough so he could sell the extra set of smurfs, BUT I don't think he should charge pay pal fees!!

In my opinion it is probably a good thing you lost the auction.. pass up the second chance offer and watch out for other mcdonalds ones.. or even watch this sellers auctions, if he really does have a bunch of Mcd's ones he is sure to relist them and who knows you might get them at a cheaper price... Just my two cents!

gerda

Hey, thanks everyone. I didn't consider the shill bidding aspect. I'll let the offer expire. I'm maxed out for the month, anyway, and like you said, these smurfs are easy to come by.

BTW, why would a bidder list in two different locales? Judging by the seller info, he's registered in Germany but runs a store out of England. He's relatively cheap on postage (7 GBP for 18 smurfs), which leads me to wonder if he's mailing from Europe (European postage rates seem cheaper than the UK's).

But, in any event.... on the whole, I'm a little testy about buying from German and Netherland sellers. Most of the ebay scams seem to come from there (though Australia may be catching up).

However, I'm aware there are also a lot of good sellers.